Weekly work

An easy week this week in the challenge. It is time to visit some Tasmanian class blogs listed on my sidebar here.

I suggest you check out 2/3 Moore, 4 BC and 4/5 Hortle – they also have student blogs attached to their blogs. Look for the heading Class Blogs.

Read a post and leave a quality comment.

Also check if you have been receiving any comments on your posts. Have you been replying to any questions that might be there? Your comments on your own blog will go straight through without a teacher moderating them so make sure they are good enough.

Two ways to find the comments on your blog:

Go to your blog home page. Click on the title of a blog post that has comments. Now you should be able to see the comments and whether you have replied. Click on the reply button if you want to add more to the conversation. You don’t have to reply to every comment. Some don’t need any answer from you. Keep going back to your home page to find the next post with comments.

Go to your dashboard> comments> all comments You should now see all the comments left on any post of your blog. If there is a comment you want to leave an answer on then hover and click on reply underneath. Remember to click the big update button when finished that comment. The comment you have written will now be at the top of the list of comments. Using this method is more difficult if you have already left some comments on some posts.

Created an avatar and uploaded it to your blog as a blog avatar and a user avatar? dashboard>settings>blog avatar – make sure blog avatar widget is in your sidebar first. dashboard>user> your avatar

Created your About Me page and post – if the page doesn’t appear along the navigation bar in your theme, you will need to add the pages widget to your sidebar. Some themes have widgets at the bottom others you have to click the three lines near the top of screen.

Left some great comments on other student blogs – why not visit some mentioned on the sidebar of my blog here? Perhaps you could write a post telling me who you visited, the comment you left and why you chose that post to comment on.

Written some posts including images with attribution

Created a jigsaw puzzle to embed on your blog – instructions on my previous post

Complete the five activities above before starting on the next lot of activities in the student blogging challenge. These relate to the topic of school and will be published tomorrow (Sunday) During this week, I will be writing a How to post about using polls and surveys on your blog. This might be helpful for this week’s challenge activities.

Remember to leave me a comment here telling me which activities you have finished so I can mark them off on the work completed spreadsheet.

Create a jigsaw – make sure you have saved an image to use on your computer

Select image that you have saved on your computer that you want to make into a jigsaw

Decide how many pieces, what type of pieces and whether they rotate or not

Give the jigsaw a name and then click create at the bottom

Now you need the code to embed on your blog

Top right corner is Share – choose the option of embed

Now to the bottom of the page where it says Game

Select the code underneath and copy it

Back to your blog and start a new post

Top right corner of writing area is Visual or Text – choose Text

Paste into the writing area the code you copied earlier

Save draft

Check by right click preview to see if the puzzle is there

If yes then submit for review or publish.

Next time you start a new post, you will need to make sure it is in Visual not Text – only use Text when embedding code.

Visiting other blogs

Check out the jigsaw puzzles and stories that need an ending from the students listed below. Visit 1 from each group and leave a comment. Remember to include the URL of your blog in the comment, so they can come and visit you as well.

Dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across class blogs to your sidebar – if there are more than 10 students with personal blogs attached to your class blog, then you might need to make some changes to number of blogs. You might want to have the blogs alphabetical rather than random. You might want to include blog avatar as well as title of blog.

If you are not joining the challenge, you still need to do the settings and widget mentioned above. You should also be writing posts that are of interest to you.

October through December, I run a student blogging challenge. There are often over 2000 students from about 20 countries of the world taking part. Each week I write a post with activities for students and classes to choose from. So this week there are two things to do if you want to join the challenge and connect with other children around the world that are your age and have the same interests. If you don’t want to join then go down the post to “Still got time for more work this week” and go on with activities from there.

I want to join the challenge, Miss W!

First you need to fill in a form to register for the challenge. Here is a link to the post where the form is. Read the information at the top of the post then fill in the form. If you make a mistake with your URL don’t worry as I will be able to change it.

Second, so you can easily get to the challenge activities from your blog, you need to add the badge to your sidebar. To do this, find the big purple challenge badge on my sidebar. Right click on the image and save it to your computer. Now in a new window, open your blog dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across the widget called “image widget”

When it opens click on select an image> top left corner click on upload files> now click on select files> find the image where you saved it on your computer and click on it and open it. Your screen will now look something like this:

Change the title to Connecting globally or I’m taking part in:

Click on the big blue button at the bottom

Now your screen will be back to your widget area and you only have two more things to do.

There is a box called Link – put in the following URL http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org

Stay in window use dropdown arrow and make Open in new window

Align use dropdown arrow to make centre

Finally click the Save button

When you next open your blog, your badge should be there ready to click on for the activities starting on 1st October.

Still got time for more this week:

Check on the work completed

Have you written an interesting post of your own choice?

Have you finished work from last few weeks?

Are you visiting the other student bloggers and posters on my sidebar?

Are you leaving me a comment each couple of weeks telling me which work you have completed so I know what to mark off?

Now put cursor in the empty space above the post you have written. This is where your image will appear.

Above the post area icons are two little buttons – add media and compfight

Click on the compfight button

In the keyword area type in the animal you have written your post about eg elephant or gorilla or crocodile or ….

Click the search button

A lot of images will appear. When you have decided the image you want in your post, click on the S underneath the image.

Your image will now appear on your blog post with a few symbols and words after it. These symbols and words are the ATTRIBUTION for the image – it tells who owns the image and where you got the image from.

Very carefully put the cursor immediately after your image and before the symbols. Click the cursor in place.

Make sure the image doesn’t have little squares in the corner. You just have a long cursor line on the right hand edge of the image before the words.

Now hit enter again so the symbols and words are on a new line.

Highlight the image and symbols/words then decide if you want them to appear on the left, centre or right. Click the icon you need.

Save your draft again.

Preview your post (next to save draft button) – this will now show you what the post will look like on your actual blog.

Adding categories and tags

So your readers can easily find posts you have written, you need to learn how to add categories and tags. These are found on the right side of your post area.

To add a category, click on Add new category> in the box which appears write in your category then press the add new category button. Notice the category will now be in a list with a tick in the box in front. If uncategorized is also ticked, click in the little box to untick it. So for this week’s task, you might have the category animals or favourites or you could have both of them as categories.

Tags – these are like the keywords you search with – science might be the category and the tags could be magnets, magnetism, microscope, energy, power and so on. This week’s task means your category could be animals or favourites but the tag will be crocodile or gorilla or elephant etc.

To add a tag, write your tag in the box and click the Add button. You can add as many tags as you want that relate to the post you have written but tags are generally single words not phrases.

Now it is time to send your post in for reviewing by your teacher – the big blue button on the right side.

Congratulations!

You know how to add a creative commons image to your blog post and how to add the attribution as well. This will be marked as one of your own blog posts on the work completed spreadsheet. Leaving a fantastic comment – correctly spelled and punctuated, including capitals and paragraph if needed – will mean this is also marked off on your work completed under comments.

Leave a comment:

What was the hardest part about adding an image to your blog post? Why do you think it is important to add an image of some sort?

In my previous post I mentioned the area in the header labelled “Work completed”. It is now up to date as at today. You will notice the green squares mean you have completed that work, red squares relate to the word in red in the first column, yellow means you have done part of the activity and a blank square means you still need to do the activity.

Many of you have timezone in red; this is because you haven’t gone to dashboard>settings>general and changed to Hobart and then saved that change by going to the bottom of the page and clicking the big button.

As you complete something, leave me a comment on the Work Completed page and then I will check it and mark it off on the sheet.

If you have a question about something you are asked to do, leave a comment again on the Work Completed page again.

Over this next week, try to complete the work up to and including the bootcamp comments. Some of you have written your comment about logging in and your profile which was step 1. But step 2 is about creating your avatar and writing a post – you need to leave a great comment for Sue Waters for me to mark off step 2.

Next week, we will look at embedding some widgets so you can know where people are coming from to read your blog posts. Once you have added a visitor counter, I will start mentioning your blogs to my teacher friends around the world and they might leave you some comments on really great posts you have written.